Department of Clinical Microbiology, Fimlab Laboratories, Tampere, Finland.
Department of Internal Medicine, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland.
PLoS One. 2021 Nov 16;16(11):e0260184. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260184. eCollection 2021.
SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis relies on the performance of nasopharyngeal swabs. Alternative sample sites have been assessed but the heterogeneity of the studies have made comparing different sites difficult.
Our aim was to compare the performance of four different sampling sites for SARS-CoV-2 samples with nasopharynx being the benchmark.
COVID-19 positive patients were recruited prospectively, and samples were collected and analysed for SARS-CoV-2 with RT-PCR from all four anatomical sites in 43 patients, who provided written informed consent.
All anterior nasal and saliva samples were positive, while two oropharyngeal samples were negative. There was no significant difference in the cycle threshold values of nasopharyngeal and anterior nasal samples while saliva and oropharynx had higher cycle threshold values.
Anterior nasal swab performs as good as nasopharynx swab with saliva also finding all the positives but with higher cycle threshold values. Thus, we can conclude that anterior nasal swabs can be used for SARS-CoV-2 detection instead of nasopharyngeal swabs if the situation would require so.
SARS-CoV-2 的诊断依赖于鼻咽拭子的表现。已经评估了替代样本采集部位，但研究的异质性使得比较不同部位变得困难。
我们的目的是比较 43 名签署知情同意书的 COVID-19 阳性患者的 4 个不同采样部位（以鼻咽拭子为基准）的 SARS-CoV-2 样本的检测性能。
前瞻性招募 COVID-19 阳性患者，从所有 4 个解剖部位采集样本并使用 RT-PCR 分析 SARS-CoV-2。
所有前鼻和唾液样本均为阳性，而 2 个口咽样本为阴性。鼻咽和前鼻样本的循环阈值无显著差异，而唾液和口咽样本的循环阈值较高。
前鼻拭子的检测性能与鼻咽拭子相当，唾液也能检测出所有阳性样本，但循环阈值较高。因此，如果需要，我们可以得出结论，前鼻拭子可用于 SARS-CoV-2 检测，而替代鼻咽拭子。
